# Quotes about justice - Quotes: 40 - Authors: 15 - Topic page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice ## Quotes > [W]henever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Whatever is supreme in a state, ought to have, as much as possible, its judicial authority so constituted as not only not to depend upon it, but in some sort to balance it. It ought to give a security to its justice against its power. It ought to make its judicature, as it were, something exterior to the state. Reflections on the Revolution in France Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all. Reflections on the Revolution in France Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity. Reflections on the Revolution in France Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > We have public-house licensing laws, but not sumptuary laws. That is to say, we have laws against the festivity and hospitality of the poor, but no laws against the festivity and hospitality of the rich. We have laws against blasphemy—that is, against a kind of coarse and offensive speaking in which nobody but a rough and obscure man would be likely to indulge. But we have no laws against heresy—that is, against the intellectual poisoning of the whole people, in which only a prosperous and prominent man would be likely to be successful. The evil of aristocracy is not that it necessarily leads to the infliction of bad things or the suffering of sad ones; the evil of aristocracy is that it places everything in the hands of a class of people who can always inflict what they can never suffer. [G. Chesterton](https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton.md) · [Heretics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics/we-have-public-house.md) Topics: [power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power.md), [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich. The word "kleptomania" is a vulgar example of what I mean. It is on a par with that strange theory, always advanced when a wealthy or prominent person is in the dock, that exposure is more of a punishment for the rich than for the poor. Of course, the very reverse is the truth. Exposure is more of a punishment for the poor than for the rich. The richer a man is the easier it is for him to be a tramp. The richer a man is the easier it is for him to be popular and generally respected in the Cannibal Islands. But the poorer a man is the more likely it is that he will have to use his past life whenever he wants to get a bed for the night. Honour is a luxury for aristocrats, but it is a necessity for hall-porters. [G. Chesterton](https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton.md) · [Heretics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/heretics/science-in-the.md) Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul. > > I would also want a God who would not allow a Hell. Infinite torture can only be a punishment for infinite evil, and I don’t believe that infinite evil can be said to exist even in the case of Hitler. Besides, if most human governments are civilized enough to try to eliminate torture and outlaw cruel and unusual punishments, can we expect anything less of an all-merciful God? > > I feel that if there were an afterlife, punishment for evil would be reasonable and of a fixed term. And I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell. > > But all that is just playing. I am firm in my beliefs. I am an atheist and, in my opinion, death is followed by an eternal and dreamless sleep. [Isaac Asimov](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov.md) · [I, Asimov](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/i-asimov.md) · p. 338 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/i-asimov/if-i-were.md) Topics: [religion](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/religion.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md), [god](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/god.md) > Well, then, arrest him. You can accuse him of something or other afterward. [Isaac Asimov](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov.md) · [Foundation](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/foundation.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/foundation/well-then-arrest.md) Topics: [power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way. [Isaac Asimov](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov.md) · [The Caves of Steel](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/the-caves-of-steel.md) · p. 184 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/isaac-asimov/the-caves-of-steel/there-are-degrees.md) Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > You listen and live prudently, in fact you do not live at all, but work and save and are burdened with cares; and so your whole life passes. Then, all of a sudden, the whole thing turns upside down; times come when the world mocks at reason, when the Church shuts its doors and is silent, when authority becomes mere brute force, when they who have made their money honestly and with the sweat of their brows lose both their time and their money, and the violent win the game. No one recognizes your efforts and there is no one to help or advise you how to keep what you have earned and saved. Can this be? Surely this cannot be? [Ivo Andric](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ivo-andric.md) · [The Bridge on the Drina](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ivo-andric/the-bridge-on-the-drina.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/ivo-andric/the-bridge-on-the-drina/you-listen-and.md) Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > But now, deep in the earth, the miner was waking from his slumber and germinating in the soil like a real seed; and one fine day people would see what was growing in the middle of these fields: yes, men, a whole army of men, would spring up from the earth, and justice would be restored. Germinal Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > They spoke one after the other in a despairing voice, giving expression to their complaints. The workers could not hold out; the Revolution had only aggravated their wretchedness; only the bourgeois had grown fat since '89, so greedily that they had not even left the bottom of the plates to lick. Who could say that the workers had had their reasonable share in the extraordinary increase of wealth and comfort during the last hundred years? They had made fun of them by declaring them free. Yes, free to starve, a freedom of which they fully availed themselves. It put no bread into your cupboard to go and vote for fine fellows who went away and enjoyed themselves, thinking no more of the wretched voters than of their old boots. No! one way or another it would have to come to an end, either quietly by laws, by an understanding in good fellowship, or like savages by burning everything and devouring one another. Even if they never saw it, their children would certainly see it, for the century could not come to an end without another revolution, that of the workers this time, a general hustling which would cleanse society from top to bottom, and rebuild it with more cleanliness and justice. Germinal Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > The only guarantee of the Bill of Rights which continues to have any force and effect is the one prohibiting quartering troops on citizens in time of peace. All the rest have been disposed of by judicial interpretation and legislative whittling. Probably the worst thing that has happened in America in my time is the decay of confidence in the courts. No one can be sure any more that in a given case they will uphold the plainest mandate of the Constitution. On the contrary, everyone begins to be more or less convinced in advance that they won't. Judges are chosen not because they know the Constitution and are in favor of it, but precisely because they appear to be against it. [H.L. Mencken](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hl-mencken.md) · [Minority Report](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hl-mencken/minority-report.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hl-mencken/minority-report/the-only-guarantee.md) Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Equality before the law is probably forever inattainable. It is a noble ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is not rights but privileges. [H.L. Mencken](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hl-mencken.md) · [Minority Report](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hl-mencken/minority-report.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hl-mencken/minority-report/equality-before-the.md) Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated, can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date on which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life. [Albert Camus](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus.md) · [Reflections on the Guillotine](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/reflections-on-the-guillotine.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/reflections-on-the-guillotine/capital-punishment-is-the.md) Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md), [crime](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/crime.md) > A punishment that penalizes without forestalling is indeed called revenge. [Albert Camus](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus.md) · [Reflections on the Guillotine](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/reflections-on-the-guillotine.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/reflections-on-the-guillotine/a-punishment-that.md) Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder? [Albert Camus](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus.md) · [Reflections on the Guillotine](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/reflections-on-the-guillotine.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/reflections-on-the-guillotine/what-will-be-left.md) Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other. [Albert Camus](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus.md) · [The Rebel](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-rebel.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-rebel/absolute-freedom-mocks.md) Topics: [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn. [Albert Camus](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus.md) · [The Rebel](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-rebel.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-rebel/the-slave-begins.md) Topics: [power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Always remember, your uncle was a thief. He stole what was rightfully yours. [James A. Michener](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-a-michener.md) · [The Covenant](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-a-michener/the-covenant.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/james-a-michener/the-covenant/always-remember-your.md) Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md), [crime](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/crime.md) > If others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a sympathy with the State, they do but what they have already done in their own case, or rather they abet injustice to a greater extent than the State requires. If they pay the tax from a mistaken interest in the individual taxed, to save his property, or prevent his going to jail, it is because they have not considered wisely how far they let their private feelings interfere with the public good. This, then, is my position at present. But one cannot be too much on his guard in such a case, lest his action be biased by obstinacy or an undue regard for the opinions of men. Let him see that he does only what belongs to himself and to the hour. Civil Disobedience Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race, should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her, but against her — the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.' Civil Disobedience Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power.md), [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn. Civil Disobedience Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [morality](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name — if ten honest men only — ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. Civil Disobedience Topics: [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md), [courage](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/courage.md) > Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. Civil Disobedience Topics: [power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power.md), [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army. Civil Disobedience Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [war](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. Civil Disobedience Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [morality](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Civil Disobedience Topics: [morality](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Action from principle — the perception and the performance of right — changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine. Civil Disobedience Topics: [morality](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. Civil Disobedience Topics: [morality](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/morality.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md), [responsibility](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/responsibility.md) > Why, it was like reading about France and the French, before the ever memorable and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror -- that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves. [Mark Twain](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain.md) · [A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthurs-court.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthurs-court/why-it-was.md) Topics: [history](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/history.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md), [suffering](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/suffering.md) > A man can’t get his rights in a govment like this. Sometimes I’ve a mighty notion to just leave the country for good and all. [Mark Twain](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain.md) · [Adventures of Huckleberry Finn](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/adventures-of-huckleberry-finn.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/mark-twain/adventures-of-huckleberry-finn/a-man-cant.md) Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > One of the wonderful things about the information highway is that virtual equity is far easier to achieve than real-world equity...We are all created equal in the virtual world and we can use this equality to help address some of the sociological problems that society has yet to solve in the physical world," [Bill Gates](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-gates.md) · [The Road Ahead](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-gates/the-road-ahead.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/bill-gates/the-road-ahead/one-of-the.md) Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition. [Aristotle](https://www.leafyquotes.com/aristotle.md) · [Nicomachean Ethics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/aristotle/nicomachean-ethics.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/aristotle/nicomachean-ethics/when-people-are.md) Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he might have thought that the usual order of things was reversed, and that the felons were trying the honest men. [Charles Dickens](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens.md) · [A Tale of Two Cities](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/looking-at-the.md) Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Before that unjust Tribunal, there was little or no order of procedure, ensuring to any accused person any reasonable hearing. There could have been no such Revolution, if all laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal vengeance of the Revolution was to scatter them all to the winds. [Charles Dickens](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens.md) · [A Tale of Two Cities](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/before-that-unjust.md) Topics: [politics](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > "'We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs are by those superior Beings — taxed by him without mercy, obliged to work for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged and plundered to that degree that when we chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the doors barred and the shutters closed, that his people should not see it and take it from us — I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should most pray for, was, that our women might be barren and our miserable race die out!'" [Charles Dickens](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens.md) · [A Tale of Two Cities](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-dickens/a-tale-of-two-cities/we-were-so-robbed.md) Topics: [power](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power.md), [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > Some years ago Professor Bixler reminded us of the danger of overstressing the well-adjusted life. Everybody passionately seeks to be well-adjusted. We must, of course, be well-adjusted to avoid neurotic schizophrenic personalities, but there are some things in our world to which men of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men of work and food, and the to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. [Martin Luther King, Jr.](https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-luther-king-jr.md) · [Strength to Love](https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-luther-king-jr/strength-to-love.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-luther-king-jr/strength-to-love/some-years-ago.md) Topics: [society](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/society.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md) > The meaning of this story is not found in the drowning of the Egyptian soldiers, for no one should rejoice at the death or defeat of a human being. Rather, this story symbolizes the death of evil and of inhuman oppression and unjust exploitation. [Martin Luther King, Jr.](https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-luther-king-jr.md) · [Strength to Love](https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-luther-king-jr/strength-to-love.md) · p. 73 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-luther-king-jr/strength-to-love/the-meaning-of-this.md) Topics: [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md), [evil](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evil.md) > The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist! [Martin Luther King, Jr.](https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-luther-king-jr.md) · [Strength to Love](https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-luther-king-jr/strength-to-love.md) — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/martin-luther-king-jr/strength-to-love/the-hope-of-a-secure.md) Topics: [freedom](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom.md), [justice](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/justice.md)